#some plot analysis

[iamhereinthebg]

Let's talk about the clock keepers boundary!

(warning: spoilers until chapter 124!!)

I've had some guess on where they could be from so let's look at what we have in the manga for now. I will keep things on surface level for the most part but it's just some things I noticed!

The first mention of the town is in chapter 111, where we finally have a view on their boundary.

A lot of fans already guessed from their clothes that they were not from Japan, this panel definitely confirms it and even points more precizely to a European country, mostly Western Europe. And also a country where Winter with snow exist.

It's also not an English speaking country, since Akane cannot understand the language and we know he has english classes at school.

Now there are several things we can look at to have more clues!

First, the architecture.

This type of house is called Timbered framed houses. It’s important to note that the roofs on those houses are really really sharp here. Which means theywere built for snow, so it can slide off the roofs more easily. The trees are also pines, something that can be found in a lot of Europe. (wood was needed to be able to create houses made of wood/with visible Framework( Little note: I know Italy was a guess for a lot of person because of the link to Pinocchio, but Italy main material for houses is stone not wood. And it is also not known for its winter.)

Here we can also see bricks which is something more associated to countries like Germany, Belgium or the Nertherlands, we don't have the colors so we can't guess from which minerals it was made for now.

But we have even more informations when we look at chapter 124!

The bridge and tower may be inspired by a fortified city, something that you could find A LOT in Western Europe during the middle age, not a lot of cities still have their entire walls but you can still see it if you go into old medieval towns. We can also see something that looks like a Belfry on several panels. Towers used mostly to indicate each passing hour of the day (may be a campanile or a bell tower (the difference is wether it's linked to religion or not basically)

Second! Let's do a little bit of clock making history!

I won't go into details, but there are some countries to point for this. England, The Netherlands and Germany. We already took out England before and we can easily erase Nertherlands from the list with the next step (my favorite one).

The food! I already had my suspicions confirmed with this bonus art from volume 22.

First of all, they have tea which is not something that was in Europe before the XVII century. But let's look at the sweets they have here.

Chocolates which look close to Belgian chocolate ( I say Belgian but other countries' chocolate is pretty close to it) , Christstollen Cake, and Spiztbuden.

We have even more to look at with the new chapter! And they confirm that it's indeed a stollen cake.

With all these foods it's now pretty obvious which area the clock keepers are inspired from.

Stollen cakes are German cakes, ginger cookies are from Germany too. I will also add that there is a chance the crescent moon cookies are VanilleKipferl. We have another panel showing Sausages and bread. Only the Almond is something not typical from Germany but which clearly was all over Western Europe with trades.

Their city already looked like the 'perfect christmas city' you can see in movies, inspired by German culture. And they also mention Mulled Wine which is THE beverage to take in any chritmas market in Europe.

Chritmas markets are inspired and coming from Germany first, but I wanna point something more.

My main guess was, Nuremberg, the city where the ancestor of the pocket watch was created, the Nuremberg Egg. It's also a Fortified city and it has forests around it. It's also known for its Ginger cookies!

So Germany would be a great pic, but the more I think about it the more I can also see the link to another region: Alsace.

Alsace is a region from France right now BUT it's a mixt of german and french culture (I will not make a history lesson but it is a place that always switched between France and Germany basically, now it's French).

All the food mentionned before are also made in the Alsace region!

It's situated in the Vosges, a chain of mountains known to have a lot of forets of pines and which is known to have villages like this:

Which were also the main inspirations for movies like Howl's moving castle for example. You can see the similarities between the artchitectures

The first ever Chritmas Market was in Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, when it was German and it spread accross Europe after.

I will now look at something I usually don't do because I exclude Aus from canon but it's just a funny thing to point out.

This au shows a snow town inspired by ginger bread houses. I just find it funny because Aoi is shown as a baker, with bread (which are not baguette I think, it's way larger here) but with some croissant on her table (disclaimer: Croissant are not french at first, this form here is, but it's from Austria otherwise) And Kako clearly has something similar to a Wine bottle in his hands. This au is the only one featuring them, was given with their volumes and the vibes are really similar to their boundary.

I would say no matter what it's definitely closer to German culture but I wanted to point out this region which is known for it's Christmas season and its typical houses.

I will mostly say that it's an inspiration from this region of Europe, I don't know if a real country is the reference for it since we don't even know where tbhk takes place, but it's always funny to look at those things :DD

Little bonus:

In a more messy note, the clothes. I put them at the end because besides their hats, I had no idea how to describe it, since it seems pretty typical of what people could wear in winter.

I did the research in the other way, to look for German and Alsacian clothing to see if it match and it kinda does but I don't think it's speficific to this region. The girls wear classic white Charlotte and big clothes with layers for Winter.

The clock keepers clothes are different, it looks like a mixt of Japanese and western European clothing (especially from england).

Their main outfits for Akane and Kako really just look like a typical waistcoast/costume you can find in the XIXth century in Europe and Mirai's seems more inspired by a mixt of a Kimono with several layers(she also has sandals and frills) and a coat? The little knots Kako and Akane have on their coats look like something inspired from Mizuhiki knots too (I actually saw a costume with those exact same knots in a museum but I didn't take a picture rip)

So I would say they probably changed slowly their attire when they arrived in Japan, we don't know since how many times they are here, but we know that what is happening in the deeper place of the boundary is linked to memories previous to their arrival. According to their origin I think we can say that it's pretty sure they arrived after the Meiji/during the Meiji Era in Japan (1868/1912), since it's a this time Japan mostly imported Western culture (for clothing here, the first contact was before this. And note: it was mostly rich people who dressed like this). And If we look at some others dates like the things they are eating, used to have or even their clothes, I would say it's more probably the Meiji Era and not in the XVs.

Another note is that their clocks have the numbers written in japanese on it (in the og version but it maye just be so it's readable for the japanese readers? idk if it's a choice or not).

I haven't searched much on their clothes but it was still something I wanted to note here ^^

[sillysoliloquyshits]

Things we don't really talk about much on Ne Zha 2 (and the first movie:

1. Ne Zha may seem very impulsive once his temper is on fire, but he can be very focused and clear minded on his responsibilities and loyalties no matter what, as shown when he could've just let Ao Bing die out of vengeance for his dad, but he still rushed to beat Lady Shi up so he can get Ao Bing's problem done for and so he can focus on enacting revenge on Ao Guang

2. In that similar vein it could be interpreted that Ne Zha was taking a gamble in destroying his body to free himself from the curse in the cauldron (instead of following his mom in death), since he may have taken Ao Guang's words that the Samadhi fire in the cauldron is compatible with his own seriously, so even despite the raging grief and agony he still tried his hardest to free himself so he can free his dad and Ao Bing and everyone later

3. Ao Bing learns as quickly as Ne Zha (who literally mastered shapeshifting without his master's help very quickly) and while it's not shown when exactly Ao Bing too learnt shapeshifting, it's clear that with their special spiritual power status they just learn new and difficult skills fast

4. Lady Yin and Li Jing really share a powerful bond where even if Lady Yin spent her last moments with Ne Zha, it's very understandable that she still loves her husband too even without having a chance to say goodbye, and if you're a couple who already gave birth to three outstanding godly children, pretty sure you already knew what your wife was thinking and Li Jing let his wife spend her last moments with her son as he knows all along Ne Zha is her top priority and that's okay, it's called selfless love in unspoken communication

5. Also it must be said that Li Jing does subconsciously listen to his wife, as in the first movie he was persuaded to let Tai Yi Zhen Ren try to kill Ne Zha at birth until his wife came to protect him, and Li Jing was persuaded that no matter what Ne Zha is still his son, and when at the end of the first movie Ne Zha said his only regret with his dad is never having a chance to play Jianzi with him, which broke him as he realised he should've listened to Lady Yin in spending more time to make Ne Zha happy before his death, instead of strictly training him, so yeah Li Jing totally knows what listen to your wife means

7. That being said what's more heartbreaking is that the reason why Lady Yin was the one that threw the oblivion pill away from Ne Zha instead of Li Jing was because he himself couldn't make the choice in choosing his wife or his son and his wife chose for him, which just makes his grief even worse, like when I rewatched the movie I just felt so freaking awful for Li Jing haiz-

8. Ao Guang has ended up being a lonelier figure, with his siblings all betraying him and now having to let his son go with his crush best buddy forever has made his journey as a king more alone than ever, but it's not without logic as he may have figured that with Ne Zha already willing to do so much for Ao Bing, they might as well stick together to ensure Ao Bing's safety, since the Loong/dragon clan being somewhat refugees and hunted down by the heavenly court would bode ill for Ao Bing so yeah

9. I might be delulu but I saw one of the calligraphy ink posters of Lady Yin and someone saw a purple pill floating below her face and at her hair which could foreshadow her fate, but when I watched a second time I saw that bead again at her hair tie when there was a closeup of her face in sending Ne Zha away so if the creative team really hid her foreshadowed fate in her literal hair tie I'm gonna-

10. While Tai Yi is kinda nerfed for continuity reasons (where hundreds of his cultivation years are gone just to protect Ne Zha and Ao Bing's souls), we can't deny that he still has the most integrity out of all the immortals, along with Ne Zha's parents, so yeah hopefully that will be continued for Tai Yi as he's ironically the model of what a cultivator should be like despite his lower levels of power compared to other immortals, as he still has a conscience (and is forced to be a babysitter for both Ne Zha and Ao Bing as usual lol)

11. It's also ironic that while the actual humans and humans-turned-immortals are the truly righteous ones with a conscience and not as discriminatory, it's those immortals who were once spirits who project their prejudices and hatred for their own spirit status on themselves and deepen the divide between spirits/demons and humans and the hypocrisy that comes with it, which really gives a dark reflection on how harmful internalised racism can be

12. One instance I realised was that when Shen Zheng Dao was training his disciples by the waterfall he blamed his students on how their cultivation paths are harder was solely because of their spirit birth, which when internalised sounds harsh as one doesn't really choose their birth and it also hints to the planting of seeds of internalised hatred for their own true nature and thinking that things will change for the better when you're more capable of 'not looking like a spirit/looking human' and cultivation, which really worsens the suppressing of the self in cultivation

13. Shen Gong Bao is a very ambitious character who does misdeeds to get to the top, but at least it's shown that he does work a lot harder than most for his own success, just that he snapped and decided to try and cheat his way through with stealing the Heavenly Pearl then, but at least he doesn't cheat all the way since he didn't really take the heavenly pills to help either, so it's a nuanced take on how as an antagonistic figure Shen Gong Bao doesn't always rely on his trickery

14. With all that what exactly is the purpose of cultivating? And with Li Jing and Lady Yin naively thinking cultivating is all about helping more people and accumulating merits, does that mean with their human nature that so many wished to be born as, does that mean the humans are the ones that are more sheltered from brutal realities spirits have to face in cultivating? When did such a divide start back then?

15. Some people have guessed that it's unfair that He Tong with her powers is only working to serve Wu Liang around instead of doing hunter duties like Lu Tong, and this is either a nudge to gender roles in work, where females no matter how skilled are forced to do more subservient roles, or simply because with He Tong's powers she works better as a defence while Lu Tong's archer skills is much more suitable for attacking

16. Iirc, Ao Run sort of looked like she was holding back when she was fighting Ne Zha and Ao Bing even though she's very swift in her own way, and according to BTS art and sketches of the second movie, the team had thought of how Ao Run favoured Ao Bing as her nephew, so even if she has sided with the villain, she still secretly can't beat to hurt her beloved nephew either even if Ao Bing would regard her as his enemy from now on

17. Ao Run and her other two brothers serve as a dark mirror of what happens when rebellious idealism at youth withers to cruel compliance to reality, and the director has said that Ao Run was once like Ne Zha and Ao Bing, but thousands of years of imprisonment has caused them to side the bad guys they once vowed to fight against out of self preservation, which is understandable, whereas Shen Gong Bao shows us a figure who probably once did that and still tried to fight against the bad guys after having snapped, so it goes to show that with youth and less experience, the young ones will inevitably feel invincible against anything life throws at them, the real question is whether they (Ne Zha and Ao Bing) could still persist on their core ideals and morals

18. Sometimes it's also got to do with one's nature and status as well, since Ne Zha and Ao Bing may be able to do their rebellions against heaven differently with their greater innate power compared to most characters, which pits them in a better position to survive anything the antagonists throw at them, so yeah sometimes when it comes to rebelling against the system, it's not just your morals your own innate abilities are a huge factor in determining whether you prefer to die trying or to prioritise your own self preservation

Some of these ideas are my own thoughts and some of them I heard from other people either on Tumblr or on Rednote but yeah! Super long sorry again-

[pencilofawesomeness]

How Fairy Tail could have had a really cool thematic parallel if they Committed to the Bit:

I often joke about my constant urge to spew essays on characters and topics I have thought too much about, but I refrain because translating all the thoughts in my head to words takes time and effort, and sometimes I am speaking to the void. However. I am spinning in my chair, gnawing at the bars of my enclosure, and frankly thinking way too much right now so I must scream.

It would have been so impactful if Fairy Tail emphasized Jellal being brainwashed.

Jellal is my boy, of course, but I’m not even just talking about the impact to his character: I mean the impact of the entire plot. This, of course, if we went the whole mile with the theming. The machination of being controlled, emotionally or magically influenced, or even unable to fulfill a desire due to an insurmountable obstacle, comes up numerous times throughout the plot, to both primary characters, supporting characters, and antagonists. While Fairy Tail is absolutely a series about friendship, it is also about choosing your path, with a large recurring theme of, regardless of connotation, about being selfish, and what that means on both ends of the spectrum. It’s a matter of free will, and the antithesis to this is all manner of external control. So really, it makes sense that this should be a thoroughly explored theme.

I could talk all day about all the different examples and aspects of this but I came here to talk about Jellal. First, the slavery aspect really hits the nail on the head, so we’re off to a great start—this, of course, applicable to multiple characters, which I really enjoy. Things go wild, however, when Jellal effectively chooses to trade himself for Erza in the punishment game and gets the ever-living shit beat out of him at the ripe age of eleven or twelve years old. He is, understandably, not in a good place, and he comes to the stunning conclusion that… he hates the slavers. Yeah. Checks out. Then, he hears the voice of ‘Zeref’ spewing rhetoric about hate, and it overwhelms; this, we know in hindsight especially, to be Ultear casting a mind-fuck spell in order to manipulate him, under the guise of pretending to be a figure young Jellal believed to be a god. 

When I first saw this flashback, watching the anime, I was unbelievably hyped. For all of Fairy Tail’s odd relationship with foreshadowing, I got the gist of it as soon as the magic went into his right eye and overwhelmed him. In Japanese media especially (largely due to the prevailing symbolism of the daruma doll), the right eye is a huge indicator of free will and the future—namely one’s goals. Creepy magic ghost entering the right eye with magic-bind looking things and immediately warping Jellal’s goal? A+ delivery. Of course, at the time Zeref—an unrevealed ‘evil’ entity—seemed a likely culprit, but Ultear being the puppeteer changes little of the result. In fact, it actually creates a super interesting parallel, but more on that later.

First, there are the consequences of Jellal being an antagonist who is not in control of his actions. I see people lament that it “cheapens” the severity of the arc and provides a cop-out redemption for Jellal, and while the execution of the latter certainly could have been different, I don’t think the premise of mind alteration cheapens the overall plot and theme of Fairy Tail at all; on the contrary, it could have been used to further emphasize intra- and inter- character conflict as well as provide a super engaging parallel for the end of the series. The theme of nakama, family, and friendship is huge, so what better way to emphasize that than to show a twisted example of it?

Jellal goes from ride-or-die loyal and ‘good’ to circumstantially loyal to an ideal (and the people attached to it) and ‘evil’ with the flip of a magic switch. Erza gets the immediate short of the stick when she is the first victim (aside from Jellal himself) to this meddling, and the caring friend she had seen days or weeks before is now cruel, insane, and full of threats—threats she takes heed to as she is cast from the island. Now, Erza is also a child, and one full of trauma, so I am not trying to invalidate her fear or blame her for any outcome. This also does not dive into the intricacies of saving friends at cost to oneself, and all of the conflict thereof; if anything, the complication of the matter bolsters the drama and impact. And then, we have the rest of the squad. Sho, Wally, and Milliana buy into the idea without any trouble, and they continue to buy into it as they get older. Beyond morality, it’s a power fantasy, and those are easy for formerly powerless people to latch onto. However, Simon is the only one who realizes that something is fundamentally wrong and twisted with Jellal… and his ultimate goal, developed over the course of roughly seven to eight years, is to wait it out until he finds the opportunity to kill him, or get somebody else to do it. Ultear, even after integrating herself into the group out of nowhere, gets away with her plan, because ultimately nobody questions that Jellal’s sudden change was anything but a result of trauma and his own will—even in a world with magic, where the very first arc revolves around the use and mistreatment of charm magic.

(Now, as an aside, I unfortunately have some experience in friends suddenly changing. In real life, it is rarely so sudden and obvious, of course, and the culprit is usually those horrible little signals and hormones within the mind, and nothing so fanciful or external as magic. I had a friend take a nosedive into some truly batshit ideas—cult-starting worthy—and exhibit wild mood swings and displays of unprecedented behavior. It admittedly took me a moment to ascertain it among the known issues, but once the pieces clicked, it clicked. I wished I had noticed sooner, and even though she was more culpable of her choices than a person supernaturally influenced by an outside force, I still can’t hate her for all the harm done. This is all just to say that I have, especially in recent years, a personal perspective on this trope and an appreciation for the painful nuance.) 

Refusing to reveal this mindfuckery in the arc diminishes the severity of it a great deal, I fear. We, along with the characters, spend time believing he died an insane villain… and then when he comes back amnesiac, it softens his character but does nothing to contradict how awful he had been. It’s not until years later, arcs later, that we get this random instance of the long overdue reveal to tell us that the manipulation has been discovered off screen. Not only is this utterly underwhelming, but Jellal is now actively working with Ultear and is fine with it! He’s still (understandably, after all this damn time thinking otherwise) blaming himself and lighting his own pyre to atone for things started by a factor completely outside of his control, and every character lets him. The discussion of autonomy is wasted. So, too, is all the juicy emotional fallout. We don’t see Jellal grapple with the horrifying reality that he has not been himself, that years of his life were wasted as a mental slave instead of a physical one; we don’t see Erza beat herself up (likely unnecessarily) because she could have potentially protected him but she hadn’t out of fear, and then she condemned him unknowingly; we don’t see the others truly come to terms with the fact that Jellal had been stolen from under their noses and they never noticed; we don’t even get more than a glimpse in Ultear’s head, who committed the deed because she thought her means wouldn’t matter and then they did. 

It’s horrifying. It’s tragic. It was, perhaps, preventable—in that the problem was a punchable one, to a degree—except the people involved were just children, just human, and it wasn’t enough. Friendship and flashy magic power could not trump trauma and entrapment, not this time. No matter how I think the series could have and should have handled it (and I have several ideas, of course), Jellal’s story provides a haunting case of failure regarding the themes of friendship/community and freedom that our protagonists embody. 

Which brings me to the perfect opportunity to follow up this occurrence of stripped autonomy and loss of freedom with a culmination of the affected themes, plot points, and more: the books of Zeref. 

Namely, the idea that the etherious—sapient, cognizant, and fully capable of autonomy via every depiction given of them, from Tartaros to even Lullaby to especially Natsu—can be and have been resolutely manipulated and controlled via the books by Zeref. Now Zeref, infamously hands-off up until the finale, barely utilized this. The most we ever see is instilling a directive and supernatural need to kill Zeref in the texts, which serves as an externally imposed goal. (Sound familiar, yet?) Provided Larcade clearly doesn’t have these instincts, it is not a guaranteed addition either, which further adds to the sense of deliberation. Natsu experiences this only in the last arc, in what I assume is supposed to be a very tense and jarring plot of a friend and protagonist suddenly losing himself, but it does not get expounded on for long enough to hammer the point home. The plot point of reclaiming the book becomes about saving his life only, and not his autonomy. Not only could this have been emphasized to be properly horrifying and devastating, but the effect—and the suspense—would be doubled with the prior establishment of Jellal’s arc and the tragedy therein. 

To back up for a moment, this parallel is further accentuated by the fact that Ultear and Zeref are clear mirrors of each other. Ultear was afflicted by a magic condition outside of her control and she was enslaved as a lab rat for it. When she broke free, she perceived her mother to have abandoned her, so Ultear, in her unresolved anger and grief, aims her entire goal to rectifying it, which culminated in planning to undo the entire timeline in order to make the one she wanted all along. Any casualties, any cruelties—including the mental enslavement of a slave child—are means to an end, and will ultimately be forgotten. Zeref lost his entire family to tragedy, and in his grief, he refused to forfeit the idea of regaining what was lost, namely his brother. He became afflicted with a curse—a magic condition outside of his control—and experienced cognitive dissonance for it. Ultimately, this miserable existence culminated in the idea of erasing the timeline entirely and forging his own. Any casualties, any cruelties—including subjecting his creations to the same lack of complete cognitive control—are means to an end, and will not matter. 

I mentioned that selfishness is also a recurring theme and this is a prime example of the dark side of it. For Lucy, claiming her independence and following her own path against the wishes of her estate, it is a wondrous thing. Freedom cannot be achieved without some selfishness, and this is a wonderfully handled theme in Fairy Tail, where our protagonists unabashedly put their friends above concrete morals and follow a creed to live their life to the fullest—the eternal adventure. For characters like Ultear and Zeref, their personal desires—born of horrible tragedy and frankly understandable things to want—come at the cost of the autonomy of everyone else, especially the pawns they use to further their goal. This, in true fictional hyperbole, begs the question of where the line in the sand is to be drawn, of what is acceptable on a moral standard and what is not. It is, of course, colored by the protagonist’s point of view as clear antagonism, but as a viewer of the media it provides to us to question when protecting one’s ideal becomes irrevocably an attack on the sanctity of others. 

Which brings us back to the matter of the books. The intended horror of Natsu losing control of himself, I think, could have been really emphasized in order to highlight these aforementioned themes. Imagine if, instead of a complete menagerie of new characters as the final invading force, Zeref’s key piece of his invasion was Natsu. With the intended goal of undoing time, having Natsu kill him is no longer necessary, so it would be more pragmatic to use Natsu instead as a weapon of mass destruction for his goal. Not only is he inside of Fairy Tail, but Zeref is, theoretically, doing this for Natsu too, and he won’t remember this upon success—nevermind that the Natsu we know, that presently exists, that we have watched develop over the entirety of the series, would be forever erased regardless. 

Armed with the knowledge of what happened to Jellal, and how he ultimately had no one to intervene for him, this increases the urgency within the characters and will likely expedite their discovery of why Natsu turned against them out of nowhere. This time, a resistance is launched, and characters have the chance to intervene on the behalf of a friend. Gray couldn’t save Ur, Lucy spent years ensnared by the will of a family member, Erza didn’t recognize Jellal’s plight until it was too late, but they can save Natsu, and save him quickly. Fairy Tail, Team Natsu especially, can rewrite the book of E.N.D. solely for the great cause of freeing their friend and handing him back his free will, and in the process, Fairy Tail saves their own future as well. This doesn’t preclude the ability to free Zeref from his curse, but with or without that we have a beautiful culmination of fighting for the sake of a friend, for the individual and for the whole group. This time, friendship wins. 

I just think it could have been really cool.

[johnskleats]

Azula would have lost the Final Agni Kai no matter what. Here's why:

Azula is insecure. That's why she takes cheap shots. She did it with Katara, and she did it with Aang in CoD, AND she did it with Iroh striking him with lightning. One could even argue that her behavior in CoD foreshadows some of what happens in the Agni Kai, where in CoD, Katara fights Azula, and Zuko saves her, whereas in the Final Agni Kai, Zuko fights Azula and saves Katara. It's a little mismatch of dynamics.

Azula cheating (constantly), is a staple of dishonorable behavior, which I think is interesting.

We see her "play with her food" like a cat, with the Dai Lee and other opponents she encounters. She tricks them and manipulates them and there's no threat. Killing Aang with lightning was SUPREMELY stupid on her part, and she wouldn't have done it unless she was cornered. She didn't even stick around to make sure he was dead or have any of them followed-- because she was scared. Zuko NEVER flees in fights out of fear. He doubles down like a lunatic and tries to get himself killed instead. Azula is not willing to risk her life, and that's why she's a worse fighter. The insecurity gets to her head and she psychs herself out

Azula has a lot of fire power (lol), but Zuko has the heart and commitment to see actions through to the end. That's why he would have won, had Azula not cheated.

By the end, they were evenly matched in firepower anyway. They did the Raging Line of Flames Competing Colors thing and met in the middle, and stayed there. That's how animation tells us about their ability.

Azula's seat of power in her firebending is spite and fear. She's not even mad, bro.

Zuko's seat of power, at the end, is light and life and love. One is a powder keg that runs out after you blow it up once, and the other is like an oil fire in a parking lot. There's essentially infinite fuel there.

Zuko would have certainly outlasted her. And did, if you think about it. Because she panicked.

Azula's entire persona is a mask, just as Zuko's bravado and pettiness in the first season was a mask. (Funny, that he can only be himself when he's hidden the scar with the blue spirit mask, therefore freeing himself of the shame and the mark that brands him as a villain)

They show us that Azula's mask is not only slipping, but cracking, crumbling in the mirror scene. That's why it's there: to show the audience that all of her running has finally caught up with her.

This world that Azula created has been a sham from the beginning. Castles in the sky to make up for what she lacks: love.

Which is why she would never win against Zuko if they both reached their full potential, as they did during the comet.

[paracosm-draw]

There are writers out there who make me fall in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi over and over again

Please never stop 🫶🏻

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

See, I think Charles’ annoyance and frustration with the Cat King really was just pure protectiveness and not any kind of jealousy - it’s understandable, because Edwin is not telling him what happened even though something clearly did, which is not typical for them. Edwin doesn’t usually hide things like this! Of course he’s worried!

Charles’ reaction to Monty, on the other hand, is difficult to explain in a way that isn’t jealousy. You could say he’s being protective again, but Charles shows no sign of distrust in Monty, and had no idea of who Monty was or that he might betray them - he was actually very chill with him, except in a select few specific scenes. You could say he just doesn’t like him because he got brushed off during their first meeting, but not only does that not seem like Charles at all, it also doesn’t make sense, since, again, in most instances, Charles is genuinely friendly and is happy when Monty compliments him and seems to have come around to liking him (it completely flies over his head that this is a petty jab at Edwin on Monty’s part but oh well hahaha). You could say it changes up their status quo a bit and that bothers Charles. I do think this bothers him a bit, but I think, unlike Edwin, Charles’ fear and frustration here is directed more at situations (the Cat King whisking him away for several hours, as an example) than others. He’s sociable and likes being able to talk to new people. There’s absolutely no way he’d begrudge Edwin doing the same - and he doesn’t… with Niko. Edwin and Niko hit it off and become very close and that never bothers Charles at all. He’s incredibly endeared to her, just like the rest, and for the most part, he’s chill with Monty too, and smiles pretty knowingly when Edwin confesses to him having awakened some feelings. The only exceptions, where he shows definite annoyance, are when Monty first shows up and gets really in Edwin’s personal space to show him the astrology chart he made, and when Edwin is so sucked into the book Monty gave him that he doesn’t hear that Charles is talking to him, to which he annoyedly says that they seem to have been “spending a lot of time together”.

You could say he’s unused to having anyone get in Edwin’s personal space like that, but, again, Niko. She’s very tactile with him and he doesn’t seem to mind all that much; they spend time together watching things. If it was just someone getting close with Edwin in general, not only would that be weirdly possessive for the character, but it would also mean he would show discomfort with anyone getting close, I think. Does Charles see Monty as more of a potential threat than Niko, seeing as he knows her and her personality and doesn’t know Monty? Well, maybe, but again, Charles shows no sign of distrusting Monty at all.

Monty is a boy. Okay. So something about seeing Edwin so close to a boy that is not him, getting lost in thought over something this boy gave him, really rubs Charles the wrong way. Charles appears to catch on just as quickly as anyone else that there is something (or it looks like something) between Edwin and Monty. He is not surprised when Edwin comes out to him in episode 6, and in fact, seems to have just been waiting for him to verbalize it. He smiles and is not bothered at all by Edwin showing (what he thinks is) a romantic interest in Monty - he just doesn’t like it when Monty clearly shows a romantic interest in Edwin. Um. Well. Well.

Charles is jealous. I really don’t know what else to say.

Look, when I first watched this show, I actually didn’t want them to end up together romantically - I love the idea of one having fallen in love with another who does not reciprocate and the two of them still loving each other just as much. That Edwin’s confession made them closer instead of making things awkward is such a beautiful outcome to this build up and I absolutely love it. However. On my two rewatches, I caught a lot more little details, and I think it would be very strange if the show did not follow up on this. That, plus the deliberate quality of these “jealousy” moments where the camera focuses on him, Charles’ Orpheus coding throughout the show, the fact that Edwin’s arc was far more about realizing his feelings for Charles specifically than just coming to terms with his sexuality, and that even the actors admit that Charles’ response to the confession kind of left things open, it really seems to me like the path leads to a romantic endgame for them, or at the very least, that this possibility will be explored in more depth.

**This is just my reading of it. Please do not use this post as a gotcha for anyone who loves them as a platonic duo or people who really love Crystal and Charles together (because let’s face it, they’re super cute too). I’m just doing my rambles. As per usual.

[bog-mummies]

yapping at length about stuff that nil says in zero dawn (i do not have his transcript for forbidden west. if anyone has that then HMU pleaseeee). a lot of my analyses may seem like a stretch but please just trust me. hold my hand. these are all from when aloy first meets him, and when she clears devil's thirst.

"Yes, yes, yes, trespass is forbidden on pain of death… Strange phrase, the pain of death. See, this one’s in no pain at all."

i like his little "yes yes yes". iirc he displays similar repetitive speech patterns later on and i find it very endearing. also, he's prone to philosophizing. based on his (likely) previous status as a kestrel and just the way he speaks and carries himself, i headcanon that he 1. came from a noble, or at least well-off/respectable family and 2. is well-educated and well-read. i think in another world he could've been a poet

2. "A thief, a slaver, a killer– the kind that give honest killers a bad name."

he sees himself as different, even though we *definitely* know that he's a killer, and was probably previously a slaver (or at least complicit in the enslavement of non-carja). dunno about thievery, but to his credit he doesn't seem like the stealing type to me (i'd imagine he sees it as beneath him. he's proud). anyway, he rationalizes his violence by framing it as more *civilized* than the shit bandits do. i think it's that carja exceptionalism he was probably raised with that's poking thru - he *cares* about honor. he cares about being civilized. it's important to him that he can justify what he does. he may come across as entirely amoral, but that's not really true. he does have convictions, he does believe in things other than violence, even if it's not immediately obvious.

3. (referring to a corpse) "This one and I just need a moment longer. To reflect on all we’ve been through."

i just think this is funny. he's such a freak.

4. "Call it a shared interest. And call me Nil."

there are multiple circumstances in which you can meet him for the first time, and he *always* introduces himself like this. "call me nil", not "my name is nil". i think this tiny difference is an intentional choice on his part - he is very explicitly *not* claiming that it's his name. Nil obviously not his original name, but does he even believe in names at all? i don't think he ever refers to aloy by her name in HZD - just calls her "huntress". personally, i like to think that he never learns her name until after he asks to duel. i headcanon (and this may just be projection) that nil prefers *titles* (or maybe nicknames) to names. a name is just a... sound, but a title is what you *are*. aloy is a huntress. nil is nothing (not true, but that's how he wants to perceive himself). and when he becomes "red teeth" in forbidden west, that's also a title, kind of. i'm not sure if it's something he chose, but it's still descriptive and meaningful. it's a nickname based on the mask he wears to hide his face, to hide the fact that he's carja - possibly even to hide the fact that he is *specifically* the scary-ass bloodthirsty carja from the red raids, depending on how well-known he was (spicier if it's the latter). it's based on his deliberate rejection of his past and identity, of his choice to assimilate into a foreign culture after being carja all his lifeo. it's not *just* a nickname - it's a symbol of the death of his previous identity. it mirrors how he likely changed his name after leaving sunstone rock, to reject his previous identity as a soldier, to become *nothing*. except this time, he's not nothing. he's a mask, a mystery, but he's still someone, and i think that's significant. because.

5. "Look there- those old rocks? A bandit clan squats under them. Disturb the rocks, and they’ll come wriggling out, (turns back to Aloy) worms that they are."

more of him reducing bandits to something lesser, something inhuman. more of him saying "i am not like that. i am *better* than they are."

6. "My partner and I shadowed these scum for days. Good tracker, but he went on ahead without me. We’d talked about this kind of behavior."

he never actually names his partner. significant? perhaps. perhaps not.

7. "Still, I understand. Leave it too long, your fingers itch for the bowstring."

i struggle a bit when it comes to analyzing his relationship with violence. a common interpretation i see is that for nil, sex and violence are intertwined. and i can see that (he does have a *lot* of suggestive dialogue), but i prefer a different interpretation: that he engages in violence *in place* of sex. i don't quite know how to put it into words, but i think that violence for him fulfills a similar purpose as sex (i headcanon him as ace <3). it provides him with both physical and emotional catharsis, and nil, to some degree, also sees violence as a form of intimacy (see also: some of his fight dialogue). i don't have any evidence that explicitly supports my interpretation over the other one, i just think it's more interesting this way.

8. "Trust is a rare egg to find, isn’t it? I’m just a traveler, with a bow, a concern about the state of these lands, and a missing partner."

something something "i'm nobody" something something. it's subtle but he's kind of diminishing himself here. not like, putting himself down, but making himself seem like less of an individual, less of a person. and aloy notices, and calls him out on it! "i don't think you're 'just' anything at all". and then he deflects, avoids talking about it. man it pisses me off how much he deflects and avoids talking about his past (i need to know literally everything about you and you are making it DIFFICULT for me. fuck you and fuck your stupid headdress and double-fuck your dumb haircut).

9. "And if you’re the heroic kind, who needs a little extra– there’s the captives."

implicitly distancing himself from heroism. more of that "im nothing im nobody i dont believe in anything" bullshit

10. "Feels good, doesn’t it? Hold it inside you one last breath, then let it out."

is this aftercare? discuss.

11. "They killed him. I hardly feel surprised. He was already getting cocky when we carved through the last bandit camp. I thought he and I were agreed: only enjoy the killing as much as the challenge. (he shrugs) No great loss. Nothing in the wilds I can’t handle, just me and the Voice of Our Teeth here."

distancing himself from personal relationships and ties to other people. back on his bullshit again. i do like his whole disaffected vibe tho, it's fun. i think it's interesting that he named his bow though - it's useful, it's (presumably, based on the fact that it looks like it has a mishmash of stuff from a bunch of different tribes) been with him for a while (almost certainly during the red raids), and most importantly, it's a tool for killing. violence is central to his identity, so he feels comfortable attaching himself to the tool he used, and continues to use, for violence. and he names it. y'all know how i feel about nil and names, so this is significant. i don't exactly know *how* it's significant, but i know that it is. idk im sleepy.

12. "They wrong us all. They live filthy lives, so they have to die that way, too."

see: 5 and 2.

13. "No, no– for sport. I can’t wait for wars any more: life’s too short, and the thrill of death too sharp. If you kill a tribesman, there’ll be retribution. Hunt a boar, they complain if you waste the meat. But bandits? They’re vicious. They always put up a fight. And no-one cares if you kill them."

a practical solution to his bloodlust. but it shows that he *does* care about honor (carja stuff again), that it matters to him that he does things the "right" way. i'm not sure it's really about right and wrong, more about clean and unclean. he'll challenge aloy to a duel, but he won't shoot her in the back. he'll slaughter civilians for sun-king jiran, but he won't kill innocents when there's no war to justify it. there's something there, i think.

i have a huge blind spot when it comes to nil and it's whatever the fuck he's got going on with aloy. like obviously she's a killing machine and he's enamored because of that but like. is that really *it*??? it cant be. but i suck at romance and analyzing romantic relationships so unfortunately i do not Get It™️

niloy stuff aside, i might add more onto this later. i've only really gotten out like a third of what im thinking (esp his whole deal with being carja, how his experience as a soldier for the sundom affects his relationship with violence, etc etc. and also the thing with his bow and his dealio with names. and why he seems to reject his past and personal identity so much. and common fan theories about him) but i just dont know how to put it into words.

also also also. if you liked this then you should also read this fic: 

Daylight - Anosrepasi - Horizon (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own]

because it's a very good character study on the little freak

[ssaseaprince]

I think with all the self-awareness Hannibal has, he doesn't actually know himself very well. That is a big reason why he is so obsessed with Will's view of him because he's never had someone who could give him an accurate reading of himself. There are things we all are unaware of that we do, and most of us can rely on others around us to point it out. But Hannibal has never had that. Even with Bedelia, she responds to what he tells her and what she guesses, but she is not able to truly read Hannibal either. Will is the only one who can. Hannibal is curious about himself, and Will is the only one who can tell him the things he does that he doesn't realize. He is the only one who can give him a genuine perspective. When the average person is discovering/questioning themselves and their identity, they can go to therapy, they could talk to their friends, Hell, they can go get drunk at a bar and talk to the bartender. Hannibal has no one who knows him and nobody who could give him any kind of self insight. Except Will Graham.

[princessofghosts-posts]

I must say that some of the most stupid and genius things that some authors do,in their works,is leaving plot holes that can be easily explained by some strange plot line they probably forgot about.

Take Echiro Oda for example. The guy is the mangaka of One Piece,his work is 20+ years long,and some of the plot holes he left in the beginning,if put in today's chapters,can possible pass as "foreshadow" and "ohh,this is why. Now I understand". When in reality Oda probability forgot about it or changed it.

Same thing can be said for Riordan. For example,Nico's skin in TTC is described as an "olive" color,typical of the Mediterranean. And when he come back later on he is described as extremely pale,almost like a ghost/dead person. And while Rick completely forgot about it,you can pass it as Nico's spending too much time in the Labyrinth or in the Underworld (and later on Tartarus). There are many more things that he forgot about,but the fandom can excuse them with a logical canon explication because Rick put the seeds for it. Especially with the whole memory loss problem that Nico has: he can add or retcon whatever he want about his backstory,and it can be explained with "Nico is finally remembering his life before the Lethe".

And it's a genius move to do so,especially when you are an author that doesn't reread his own works,and doesn't remember much of the previous books. But at the same time it's frustrating because you can excuse or change anything already pre-written,things that are already canon,with some no sense that can ruin your whole character.

[sillysoliloquyshits]

Another (hopefully short) essay on more reasons why people find teenage Ne Zha devilishly alluring in the last 20 minutes of the second movie: (though it's pretty obvious)

1. The moment Ne Zha walked out of the fire with his rebuilt body in total outrage, it's hard not to be hit with shock like a bullet train (and the background music didn't help), while he also demonstrates much more dominant control over his feelings and his Qian Kun Ring upon summoning so yeah very hot of him literally

2. And watching him punch and kick the big bad with nothing but his wrath and six arms and legs and no weapons really emphasize feels cathartic as we root for Ne Zha too, and it also shows his resourcefulness as he makes do with whatever he has in the moment

3. More importantly Ne Zha isn't just hot he's fucking beautiful like. I'm no artist so I don't have the aesthetic terms to do the description of his face justice but with his softer and more realistic features like his face shape and eyes and nose from the first movie, along with his manicured hands and all, we don't just see a stereotypical buff character often associated with fire powers, as he also has his own warmth and tenderness to his expressions and figure

4. And above all, it's mostly the way that Ne Zha demonstrates his tenderness even with his immense fury, and his first words after rebuilding his body were the tender and broken words asking his dad to take care of his mom now turned into a heavenly pill, before turning to Ao Bing and locking in on channeling his anger to get everyone out of the cauldron and vengeance. Ne Zha's clearly shown even more as he looks older than he doesn't shy away from expressing vulnerability and more gentleness to those he loves, and it gives rise to the multi-faceted experience as an audience is in awe of seeing Ne Zha very naturally embody the badassery in him and the softer side of him, and of course the softer side of guys are very sought out for

5. People often say that in Ne Zha there is a very harmonious external and internal balance of his nature in his teenage form, where he has devilish features and powers in a human body from human (cultivator) parents that still shapes his divinely beautiful appearance, and it compliments perfectly with how despite his temper and impulsivity and vulgar sides, Ne Zha's heart is always in the right place for his loved ones and home and how he never shies away from the rough sides and soft sides of himself anymore, which is the most courageous thing to do: accepting the dark and light aspects of yourself, and it's a Buddhist-like enlightenment he has attainted thus far that cements his own inner wisdom

Tldr: because teenage Ne Zha aesthetically and morally follows the harmonious conventions of balance, thus it makes him captivating as hell, devilishly divine, utmost pure cinema.

[tiredandoptimistic]

My take on Buffy's arc in each of the seasons (and how the villains highlight her personal journey)

Because I wake up every morning and think about Buffy Summers

Season one: Buffy starts out the show determined to deny her role as a Slayer and willing to skip a prophecy for a date. Even though she genuinely does want to help people, she's also resolved to make time for herself and her teenage whimsy. While the Master is technically the villain of the season, the real threat is the prophecy she hears in the finale: that she will die facing him. Buffy's desire for a normal life is put into direct conflict with her duty as a Slayer, and it's the bonds she built with other students like Willow that makes her realize that she cares more about being a protector than being happy.

Season two: this season systematically strips away everything Buffy had prioritized in season one. She loses her boyfriend, alienates her friends, gets expelled from high school, and kicked out by her mom. While at first she hadn't been able to make herself kill Angel, she had to come to terms with the fact that her moment of mercy led to Jenny's death. All the things necessary for a normal life are lost to her, and she can't afford to care about any of it. Her ability to go to school, her relationship with her mom, the love she has for Angel; none of it matters if the world is at stake. By the end of the season, Buffy proves her self-reliance and that she's willing to make the tough calls and kill somebody she loves if it's part of her Slayer duty.

Season three: at the start of this season, Buffy deals with the fallout of her season two arc by falling into a depression due to her isolation. Complete self-reliance is good in a fight to the death, but deeply unhealthy long-term. Buffy is a Slayer who draws strength from the love of her friends, and in season three she tries to rebuild that trust by throwing herself into all the traditional end of high school festivities. The Mayor represents the adult world they're meant to be graduating into, and he proves that there's something deeply rotten underneath the glossy suburban shell of Sunnydale. Despite the fact that the institutions of the school and the town range from apathetic to malevolent, Buffy is still able to form emotional bonds with the people she meets there. It's the power of her connection with all the other students of Sunnydale High that eventually saves the day, and even if she couldn't win Homecoming Queen she's still their Class Protector.

Season four: this is where we get into that weird phase of young adulthood where nobody has any idea what the fuck they're doing. Buffy is removed from the familiar and forced to find her way in a new environment, and she uses her newfound freedom to make some bad decisions. She and her closest friends drift apart as they all get wrapped up in their different post high school adventures, and without that safety net Buffy ends up placing her trust in the wrong people. The Initiative uses its appearance of security to manipulate young adults into throwing away their independence serving something solid. Adam is the result of this, as a young creature who's confused about his place in the world and gets sick of letting the Initiative decide his purpose for him. The thing that saves Buffy from this whole mess is to reaffirm her bond with her oldest friends, proving that growing up doesn't need to mean growing apart. The support system was always there, they just all needed to actively maintain it.

Season five: the linchpin of this season is Buffy's relationship with Dawn, as the magic weirdness of Sunnydale starts messing with the most intimate parts of her personal life. She's officially not able to keep her two world separate anymore, and has to decide whether or not she'll trust the love she has for her sister once she knows it was all planted by an outside force. Of course she chooses to stand by Dawn, and the two of them support each other through their mom's illness and death. At first Dawn's role as the key makes things very simple, since saving the day lines up perfectly with Buffy's preexisting priority (protect Dawn), but by the end she's put in a situation where she once again has to choose between the world and the person she loves most. Glory is effective as a villain because she's laser focused on hurting people Buffy loves, and is too damn strong for Buffy to actually fulfill her calling as a protector. In the end, the only way for Buffy to keep the people she loves safe is for her to sacrifice her own life for theirs (something she's been doing every day since she was fifteen).

Season six: while season five ends off with Buffy choosing to die for her friends, season six forces her to live for them. She's ripped from heaven and tossed into all the shittiest aspects of the real world, and worse than anything she's completely disconnected from herself and her friends. The main conflict here is her depression, and the contrast between the comfort she gets from Spike and the support she can't accept from her friends. Spike tells her that it's okay to not be okay, but this turns into him actively trying to keep her miserable because he thinks it's the only way she'll be with him. Meanwhile, Dawn and Giles and the rest are trying to help her support herself, which isn't exactly warm and fuzzy. When Willow becomes her dark self at the end, she basically speedruns Buffy's whole arc. She flays Warren alive for some instant gratification that hurts her in the long run, then she decides that the only way to end all suffering is to end all life, and she's eventually talked down by Xander's boundless love and support. Buffy has a similar moment at the same time, as she realizes that she wants to live because she wants to see Dawn grow up. This season shows that there isn't anything wrong with Buffy for feeling pain, but that the way out isn't to indulge her darkest feelings; it's to embrace the love of her friends and family.

Season seven: at this point, Buffy's biggest struggle is her sense of isolation. After so long as the Slayer, she genuinely doesn't think anyone else can understand her anymore (except maybe Spike, because he too has a fascinating cocktail of issues). Her isolation becomes a danger when she faces The First, a threat far too powerful for her to defeat on her own, and through Willow's magic she is able to finally be supported on all sides by people just as strong as she is. Much like graduation, this season ends with something major being destroyed to symbolize the end of a chapter in Buffy's life. She isn't just out of high school, she's officially free from the bounds of Sunnydale. She doesn't need to stay put and sacrifice her own pleasures again and again and again; there are other people willing to share the burden. Buffy can finally rest.

[angelsdean]

don't know how people multi-fandom. dipped my toe into another one and immediately backed out bc everyone there was insufferable.

[high-voltage-rat]

I often wonder what the actual state of medicine as a field is in dragonfable. We see that Magus Neron has a microscope, petri dishes, and hypodermic syringes. We know that the existence of cells is a known thing. Clearly we're not living in a pre-germ theory equivalent. But we also don't really see doctors around- alchemists like Alina seem to be the pick. Sir Junn is the only example I can really think of, and he also seems to be oriented towards alchemical solutions like the royal honey and corruption-cleansing potions, though we do have mentions of him using IVs in an ICU in his field hospital.

Healing potions would certainly be good for physical injuries, but I wonder at how well they treat illnesses and diseases. Are they a cure-all that's become so heavily relied on that, in the rare cases they don't work, nobody knows what else to do? Riadne's arachnomancy healing, delivering potions directly into the bloodstream, is treated as revolutionary, so I assume that pills or IV drips and infusions have not been popularized enough to be commonly used. Is that because potions as they currently exist are good enough for most applications, or because most people don't know how to use them, or because they're difficult to create or get ahold of? There are incredible technologies out there, as evidenced by the magisterium's drones and the gnomes'... everything. But whether or not these advances have ever been applied to medical applications has also never really been shown.

We've seen many examples of healing magic in lore, but the capabilities and limitations of it, as well as the actual process, are never really explored. Is it an actual active process of changing the body, or is it just empowering the natural healing process? We know that fleshweaving is a thing, but forbidden as an art due to its potential for abuse (and the fact that it apparently requires consuming elemental spirits), and Jaania's soulweaving-based healing of Brittany was a method she apparently invented through experimentation. So we can conclude that soul/fleshweaving are not being employed as a tool for medicine, and any commonly used healing magic probably doesn't modify the body in such a way.

There's lots of potential for medical technology and practice to improve, so one has to wonder what factors are at play to ensure they don't. Is it just reliance on the magic that already exists, leaving the people with rare cases to be untreated? I wonder if, to a degree, there's a perception of standard alchemy being "good enough" that medicine doesn't need to be improved. Perhaps that's compounded with some cultural taboos around "messing with" or manipulating the body, which may extend beyond magical practice into the scientific sphere. It could even be an acceptance of a flawed paradigm surrounding healing magic, just like how most mages accepted the leyline model of mana as absolute, when soulthreads demonstrate that it's flawed?

Or maybe the devs intended it all to remain in the mcguffin realm, where healing magic does everything you want when it's convenient and is limited only when necessary. But that's less fun to think about.

[dustykneed]

pietà (*major spoilers for st:id! death cw!*) full image below additional spacer.

i like to think that aos bones has an interesting relationship with parenthood...

especially pertaining to his relationship with jim. not that he sees jim as his son, necessarily (i don't think they're deliberately portrayed that way in canon, nor do i headcanon them like that, but honestly fandom is fun because we all have fun in our sandbox, so if anyone happens to see them that way, neat!)

but when you're a parent, and at the same time a parent friend, it's easy to take the path of least resistance when it comes to defining the undefinable relationship you have with this guy you can't seem to live without.

is he your captain? your best friend? your patient? a command prodigy and a tactical genius? a sight for sore eyes? your personal nuisance? the one and only person you can't seem to get rid of, who drags you places you hate and points out everything beautiful to you and beams like he won the lottery when you can't help but grin just a little, who brings the light back into places you forgot could be lit up like the dawn, who saw you at your worst while actively at his own worst, and plopped his fool ass down and decided you were worth fighting for?

and that's a lot of things. especially many when you're fighting tooth and nail to keep his scrap-happy ass intact and also keep an eye on a whole starshipful of people. it's a lot easier to stick to what you know-- whatever is the least risky, the safest option, one that could never possibly backfire and bite you in the ass. sometimes you forget he could see you as anything other than a parent (give or take the friend.) but parenthood goes hand in hand with grief. parenthood has its own set of burdens. but it's easy to put yourself in that box and pretend to forget about all the other boxes, collecting dust in the closet, and sometimes he prods at the closet door with something pleading in his eyes. you pretend not to see that, either.

...you don't take it well, when he dies.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Screaming from the crypt (or how the past haunts the present on Midnights)

I know it's been discussed so much since Midnights came out but just.

I love how there is such a clear narrative throughout the album (and perhaps especially on the 3am/Vault tracks). About questioning and regret and choices and coming to terms with all of it. It is one long story about how we're all a mosaic of the choices we make, each one taking something from us and leaving something else in its place.

(And now a disclaimer: I'm looking at this mostly through a narrator/subject lens, and trying not to dive too deeply into real-life events or speculation except for in a general sense. For this purpose I like to look at the body of work as art, like literature, because I find it makes it easier to see the common threads in the different songs and cohesion in the narrative.)

In looking at the 3am+ tracks in particular, it's fascinating how some turns of phrases or themes repeat themselves in different songs, in different contexts. (I'm only focusing on the non-standard tracks because there are too many songs and I'd be here all day but I bet I could do a part two lol.) I know many people have pointed out the parallels throughout her discography already and I’m not saying anything groundbreaking by writing this, but I love how these parallels run through in the same album, because it makes it seem like it's one long story, or at least, one long rumination on many different stories that are coalescing into a single narrative.

Battle (let’s go)

For instance, the one that jumped out at me when I started writing this post the other week was, "Tore your banners down, took the battle underground," in The Great War and "If clarity's in death, then why won't this die? Years of tearing down our banners, you and I," in Would've, Could've Should've. It's a story about staying stuck in the same cycle of reliving trauma and coping mechanisms and bad habits over and over again and fantasizing about how taking the “antagonist” out and gaining the upper hand for good would bring closure (WCS), but the truth is that nothing ever will. All that cycle does, though, is repeat itself in other situations, and in this case pushes someone away the narrator cares for (TGW). The difference is that the imagined battle in WCS is a two-way street in her mind (that is ultimately unwinnable because it was never a fair fight), but in TGW it's one-sided -- she's the one fighting dirty, taking shots, the way she'd been doing in her imagination (or nightmares) all these years. But the person in front of her isn't fighting back the way the person in her mind in WCS would, because their intentions are honourable instead of exploitative.

And that's paralleled in another pair of lyrics from the two songs, "And maybe it's the past talking, screaming from the crypt, telling me to punish you for things you never did," (in TGW) and "The tomb won't close, I fight with you in my sleep," (in WCS). In both cases, the funeral imagery makes it seem like this past event should be dead and buried in WCS, but it keeps rising from the dead, haunting her no matter what she does and in TGW, another (or perhaps the same?) tomb that won't close keeps unleashing new ways to hurt her and in turn the new person in her life. In other words, the trauma from the past continues to bleed into the present.

(Again from a literary point of view, I'm not saying the events of the two songs are linked IRL, but they're fascinating textual parallels on the album as a string of chapters, which is why Dear Reader is so compelling, but that's a whole other essay.)

To keep the battle motif going, there’s yet another parallel, this time between TGW’s "[You were a] soldier down on that icy ground, looked up at me with honor and truth," and You’re Losing Me’s "All I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, fighting in only your army.” In the former, the subject is laying down his armour in the war she’s projecting onto him, waving the white flag, and she realizes that she’s about to destroy something if she doesn’t put her sword down too. By the time we get to YLM, the roles are almost reversed; at the very least they’re supposed to be on the same team, but in this case she’s doing all the heavy lifting, fighting for their relationship in contrast to his apathy killing it. It’s also pretty interesting (if not outright intentional) that one of the 3am+ editions of the albums starts with The Great War, where they find themselves in conflict (even if it’s in her head) that ends in a truce, and ends with You’re Losing Me signalling the end of the relationship, evidence that the resolution in the first song wasn’t an ending but merely a ceasefire before the last battle.

Putting the rest under a cut because this is waaaaay too long now ⤵️

(There’s also another metaphor there in The Great War with its battle imagery: World War I, aka The Great War, was supposed to be the war to end all wars, because loss on its scale was never seen before and when it ended, most thought never again would the world embroil itself in such battle, the horrors and implications were so devastating. Two decades later, the world found itself in WWII, with an even larger scope and more horrific consequences, the intervening time between the two a period of festering conflicts and resentment leading to some of the worst acts the world would see. Bringing real life into it for a second, there’s something a little poetic, though sad, about The Great War the song being about a fight that could have ended the relationship that they ultimately resolved and was meant to be evidence of the strength of their love, but so too did it end up being a period of détente, the greater battle coming for them years later. But that is not the point of this post.)

If one thing had been different

Another major theme in these editions is pondering the "what ifs?" of life, but I think it takes on even more significance in the broader context of the album in the lyrics of "I'm never gonna meet what could've been, would've been, should've been you," in Bigger than the Whole Sky and the repetition of would've/could've in Would've, Could've, Should've (I would've looked away at the first glance, I would've stayed on my knees, I would've gone along with the righteous, I could've gone on as I was, would've could've should've if I'd only played it safe, etc.) In both songs, the narrator is mourning an alternate course their life could have taken* and questioning what they could have done differently, in the aftermath of trauma and loss, and the regret that comes with that loss, and with the loss of agency in the situation because ultimately it was never in their hands. In an album full of questions, wondering about the path not taken, or the forks in the road that have led to a different version of your life, it's digging deeper into the contrast of choice vs. fate, action vs. reaction, dwelling on the past vs. moving on. When you're supposed to let go of the past, what do you do when it is holding your future hostage?

(*I know there are different interpretations/speculation about BTTWS which I am not getting into on main. I'm just saying that whatever the song is about, it's grieving something that never came to be. The literal origin of the song is less important to the album than the sense of loss it portrays. Whatever the inspiration is, it's crafted to tell part of the story of Midnights of ruminating over how, to borrow from her previous work, if one thing had been different, would everything be different?)

(Also I was today years old when I realized that the words are inverted in the two songs. Apparently I've been hearing BTTWS wrong this whole time.)

There's also an interesting tangent in the role of faith in both songs: in WCS, the events of the story cause her to lose her faith (e.g. "All I used to do was pray," "you're a crisis of my faith,") and question all the things she felt had been unquestionable until that point in her life (e.g. "I could have gone along with the righteous"), whereas in BTTWS, she questions whether that very lack of faith is to blame for the loss in that song ("did some force take you because I didn't pray? [...] It's not meant to be, so I'll say words I don't believe"). It's like pinpointing the moment her life changed and upended her beliefs (WCS), but as a result then leaving her unmoored in times of crisis because ultimately there's no explanation or comfort to be taken from what she used to hold true before that (BTTWS). The words she once relied upon to guide her have long since lost their meaning, but in times of trouble it leaves her wondering if that faith she once held then lost could have prevented this pain.

(Shoutout to WCS for being Catholic guilt personified lol.)

To keep on with the vaguely faith-y notions, an obvious parallel is the line in Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve about, “I damn sure never would've danced with the devil at nineteen,” and, "When you aim at the devil, make sure you don't miss," in Dear Reader. All of WCS is about her fighting with an antagonist who haunts her, with whom she wholly regrets ever becoming involved. DR could be seen as a reflection on that fall from grace, warning the audience that if you choose to go after the person (or thing) haunting you, make sure you do so clearheaded enough to be decisive. Again, these “devils” may not be related in real life: the IRL devil in DR could be speaking about her naysayers, or Kim*ye, or Scott & Scooter B, etc., meaning not to cross your enemies until you know you can win. But taking real life out of it and looking at it textually, I am intrigued by the link between WCS and DR, so that’s what I’m going with here. And perhaps that’s even the point in a wider sense; there will be multiple “devils” in your life, or threats to your well-being. If you’re going to commit to taking them down — whether it’s an actual person, or the demons inside you that refuse to let you go — make sure you have the right ammo so that they can no longer hurt you. (Of course, one lesson from these experiences is that sometimes you can’t win, and you have to live with the fallout.)

(Sidebar: I know that “dancing with the devil” is a turn of phrase that means being led into temptation and engaging in risky behaviour, as opposed to describing the actual person. Given the religious metaphors in the song, that could very well be/is the intention, particularly when it’s preceded by, “I would have stayed on my knees” as in she would have continued to follow her faith — in whatever sense that means — had she never met this person, which could also be a more eloquent way of saying she would have continued to be live her life in a way that was righteous (even naive) and seen the world in black and white. Either way, it’s a force she wholly rejects. Like I said, multiple devils, same fight.)

Regret comes up too: in WCS, she says, "I regret you all the time," obviously directed at the person who manipulated her and led to her perceived downfall, citing him as the one impulse she wished she'd never followed, because it won't leave her no matter how hard she’s tried. In High Infidelity, she tells the person to, "put on your records and regret me," and on the surface, it’s like she’s turning the tables, painting herself as the one now causing the regret in someone else, the one inflicting the pain this time. Yet the verse preceding it and the lines following it in the chorus depict a partner who is also emotionally manipulative and vindictive like in WCS (“you said I was freeloading, I didn’t know you were keeping count,” “put on your headphones and burn my city,”). It’s not so much that she’s intentionally harming the person (the way the person in WCS does to her), but rather that the venom in the subject’s feelings towards her seeps through; she’s imagining the way he’s going to feel about her when she leaves, hating her just for by being who she is. (There could be another tangent about how in both songs she’s there to be a “token” in a game for both of the men, who play her for their own purposes.) The regret is dripping with disdain. It’s as though she’s picturing how the person is going to hate her for doing what she’s thinking of doing the way she hates the person who first hurt her.

Sadness, unsurprisingly, shows up in a few lyrics. In BTTWS, “Everything I touch becomes sick with sadness,” sets the scene of a person so overcome with grief that it permeates everything around them; they cannot see their way out of it and feel like the fog will never lift. In Hits Different, it’s, “My sadness is contagious,” the result of a breakup where the person’s grief again touches everything and everyone around them, pushing them further in their despair and loneliness. The reason behind the grief in either case may vary, but regardless of the source, the feeling is overpowering and isolating. They may be different chapters in the story, but the devastation is hauntingly familiar. (As is a recurring theme in Midnights as a whole: there are situations and feelings that present themselves at different points in her journey and colour in the lines in different ways along the road. Like revisiting an old vice and realizing the hit isn’t quite the same as it was in the past.)

Death by a thousand cuts

She also writes about wounds on this album, which isn't surprising I suppose given that the whole conceit is that these are things that have kept her up at night over the years. WCS is perhaps the driving narrative on this never ending hurt when she sings, “The wound won't close, I keep on waiting for a sign, I regret you all the time,” suggesting that no matter what she does, the pain of this experience has permeated everything she’s done afterwards. (Not unlike the overwhelming grief in BTTWS, for instance.) Elsewhere, in High Infidelity she sings, "Lock broken, slur spoken, wound open, game token," and in Hits Different, "Make it make some sense why the wound is still bleeding.” Again I'm not suggesting they're about the same events; the line in HI is about a situation where a partner crosses a boundary, hits below the belt, picks at an insecurity (or creates a new one) and treats the relationship like it's transactional, opening the floodgates in turn. In HD, the wound seems to be more self-inflicted, where she's pushed the person away. (Over a situation real or imagined she feels she needs distance from.) But again, something has picked at her like a raw nerve, and just like in the past, she's hurting, even in a different time and place and person. Almost like the wounds of the past break open over and over again to create new scars. If one were to extrapolate further, it wouldn’t be the biggest leap to wonder if the wound open in WCS, then torn apart in HI makes the one in HD hurt even more.

(I once wrote a post about how I think as time goes on, WCS is going to turn into one of those songs that will be found to drive so much of her work, because it’s just… kind of the unsaid thesis statement of so much of her songwriting.)

Another repeated theme is that of the empty home and loneliness. In High Infidelity, she sings, "At the house lonely, good money I'd pay if you just know me, seemed like the right thing at the time," painting a picture of someone who may have everything they'd want to the outside world, but in reality feels metaphorically trapped in their home (or at least alone amidst abundance), a symbol of a relationship gone sour and a failure to build connection. She just wants someone to understand her, want her for her, but as she's written earlier in the song, she's just a pawn in the game, a trophy from the hunt. Home, in this case, is lonely, isolated, an emblem of her fears. In Dear Reader, she continues this thread, then singing, "You wouldn't take my word for it if you knew who was talking, if you knew where I was walking, to a house not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there, where I pace in my pen and my friends found friends who care, no one sees you lose when you're playing solitaire." It's the same idea, admitting to listeners that the gilded cage she lived in kept her distanced from her loved ones and real connection, keeping her struggles close to the vest but feeling desperately lonely amidst her crowning success. She's pushed people away and it may have felt like the right thing at the time, but in the end maybe felt like she was trapped. And when you push people away, eventually they take you at your word and stop pushing back; you’re a victim of your own success at isolating yourself. What starts out of self-preservation then further perpetuates the underlying problems.

(There's another interesting link about "home" also feeling unsafe with HI's "Your picket fence is sharp as knives," which further leads into the theme of marriage/domesticity feeling dangerous, which is a whole other thing I won't get into here because it's another discussion and may derail this already gargantuan word salad.)

In a slightly similar vein, we have the metaphor of bad weather for a rocky road or unstable relationship, in High Infidelity again with, "Storm coming, good husband, bad omen, dragged my feet right down the aisle" and You’re Losing Me’s "every morning I glared at you with storms in my eyes.” They aren’t speaking of the same situation or even same kind of breakdown, but it is pretty interesting how the idea of clouds/storms/floods/etc. play such a role in Taylor’s music to signal depression, apprehension, fear, uncertainty, etc. In HI, I think the “storm” coming is the looming threat of commitment to a partner who makes the narrator uneasy (if not fearful). In this case, the idea of making a life with this person is not one that incites joy or comfort, but instead makes the narrator feel that dark times are ahead if she continues down this path. Perhaps in some way, the “storms” in YLM have made good on the threat in HI in a different way; it’s a different home, a different relationship, but the clouds have settled in regardless, and some of her fears have come to fruition in ways she did not expect. The person she once trusted no longer sees her or her struggles (or worse, doesn’t care), and the resentment and pain build with each passing day.

Coming back to heartbreak, one of the obvious "full circle" moments is the beginning of a relationship in Paris, where she says that, "I'm so in love that I might stop breathing," clearly enthralled in a new love that allows her to shut the world out and grow in private, capturing the all-encompassing nature of the relationship. This infatuation has consumed her in the most wonderful way (in contrast to the sorrow of some of the previous songs), and it feels like a life-altering (or even life-sustaining?) force that is so strong she may forget what it’s like to breathe. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) By the end of the album, though, in You're Losing Me, that heart-stopping love has become a threat: "my heart won't start anymore for you." In the former, her racing heart is full of excitement, but by the latter, her heart has given out completely under the weight of the pain she bears. (YLM is full of death/illness imagery which I already wrote about awhile ago so I won't hear, but needless to say that song deserves its own essay for so many reasons.) She's gone from the unbridled joy of the beginnings of a relationship to the unrelenting sorrow of its end, two sides of the same coin.

Love as death appears elsewhere in the music too, for instance, in High Infidelity’s, “You know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love, the slowest way is never loving them enough" and You’re Losing Me’s “How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dying? […] My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick.” Though not completely analogous situations, they both tell the tale of one partner’s apathy (or at least denial) destroying the other. In the former, the partner’s actions (or inaction) are more insidious, if not sinister; in the latter, the lack of momentum (or admission of a problem) is passive. In both cases, the end result is the narrator’s demise; it’s a drawn out affair that chips away at her morale and her health and her sense of self. (Breaking my own rule about bringing in alleged actual events into the discussion, but the idea that the relationship in High Infidelity, which was obviously fraught with unease and even fear, ended in a similarly excruciatingly slow and hurtful death by a thousand cuts as the relationship in You’re Losing Me almost did at that time must have been so painful. It almost feels like YLM is wondering why what used to be a source of light in her life was mirroring a situation that caused her such pain in the past.)

From the same little breaks in your soul

I said early on that part of what is so compelling about Midnights is that it feels like an album about ruminating — on choices, on events, on people — and the two final “bonus” tracks of the album depict that as well. In Hits Different, she sings that, “they say if it’s right, you know,” an ode to the confusion of a breakup and struggling with the aftermath of calling it quits. It’s a line that has always intrigued me, because the typical use of the phrase is in the sense of, “you’ll know when you meet the one,” but here it seems to have a double meaning, a reassurance perhaps from the friends (who later on tell her that "love is a lie") that she’ll know if she’s made the right decision in calling it off, but could also be her wondering if the relationship is right, she’ll know, and want to reconcile. In the final bonus track, You’re Losing Me, she sings, “now I just sit in the dark and wonder if it’s time,” this time leaving no doubt about the dilemma she faces, though it’s no less fraught. She’s wondering, perhaps for the last time, if now is finally the moment to end the relationship for good. They say that if it’s right she’ll know, and now she’s wondering if that feeling inside her (that once told her her partner was the one, which is why it hit differently), is telling her that it’s time to go for good. Wait Alexa play “It’s Time To Go.” These are not only the things that keep her up at night, but the things that play over in her mind like a film reel in her waking hours.

Midnights as a whole is a deeply personal album, as is most of Taylor's work, but the 3am+ edition tracks seem to dig even deeper to a lot of the issues raised on the standard album. Almost like the standard tracks are the things she wonders about on sleepless nights, but the bonus tracks are the things that haunt her in the aftermath. The regret, anger, sadness, grief, relief, even joy— they’re the price she pays for the memories she keeps reliving. Midnights might be the most cohesive narrative of all her albums, and really does feel like we’re watching someone work through her journal over time, stopping short of outright naming those giant fears and intrusive thoughts (except for when she does) but making them plain as day when you connect the songs together, and perhaps never more clearly than in the expanded album. It’s incredible how the songs stand on their own to relay a specific moment in time, but that they are also self-referential to each other (whether thematically or overtly) to weave a larger web over the entire work. We’re so lucky as fans to have these stories and to keep peeling back these layers as time passes. (And my literature-analysis-loving ass loves her even more for it.)

This is obviously by no means an exhaustive list, and I know there are more parallels and probably even stronger links (particularly when you add the standard version into the mix), but these were the ones that particularly struck me and I’m just glad I’ve had a chance to sit with this and think it through. ❤️

[waateeystein]

New Del Toro Frankenstein photo!!!!

I've been dissenting towards aspects of the costume design that we've seen thus far, but today I'd like to throw some praise their way! It's the way I'm OBSESSED with this vest, I absolutely must research the lacing at the back, that is such a fun detail. I'm also a big fan of the sideburns. The overall silhouette of this costume feels very appropriate, but in the context of this screenshot I have so many questions.

Based on the outfits of the background characters, it seems Victor is giving some kind of presentation at a university. I'm not sure if this is meant to be Ingolstadt or another new location. In relation to costume, he's not wearing a coat or hat, he seems quite dishevelled, and I'm wondering if at this point in the film, Victor has been frantically working on his creature and is hurriedly presenting his discoveries. The prop also seems to suggest this. These professors probably saw Victor stroll in looking all Victorian-dishevelled and are probably like "wtf are you up to man."

We also now have confirmation of a November 2025 release! Very appropriate as in the book, Victor finishes creating the Creature in the month of November, but I'm sure they also chose the date for spooky season/the upcoming holiday season. I would also love some confirmation if we are getting a theatrical release alongside the Netflix release.